What can I tell you that
makes no noise?
But makes a sound
that you can hear
within a heart’s distance.
Is there anything more
powerful than a wind’s whisper
in a midsummer night’s day.
It may wither and break
somehow it lasts longer
than death.
Its hold is longer than
life’s fingers.
What can I tell you that
makes no noise?
Other than the wind’s
cold whisper.
There is a room between the two of us,
a lingering light wavers as you step in closely,
I wonder what is was like to be on the other side.
Saan ba maririnig ang mga awit ng bituin?
Doon ba sa may kalawakan kung saan ang liwanag
ay isang munting kislap sa paligid ng dilim?
Sa iyo ba ito kung nanaisin mo?
Saan ito makikita kung wala ito sa langit?
Peter sat in a cafe drinking his coffee when a woman suddenly sat beside him and told him all her secrets. The way she didn’t like it when her husband folded the sheets wrong or when he kisses her on her left cheek. She told Peter she didn’t plan on getting married. Peter sat still and looked at the woman in the eye and smiled. She kept on talking. Peter kept on smiling. She told him how she liked to smoke but her husband did not want her to, lung cancer he says. What’s up with him and death? the woman said. She took out a cigarette. Peter shared a smoke. The woman puffed a clear white smoke. She touched Peter’s hand. Peter smiled and looked her in the eyes. She sat for a moment as if to wait for something to arrive but the moment passed, she walked away without saying her name. Peter smiled and drank his coffee.
I found a bone jutting out of the ground just a few miles from our house. Its clear white skin forming faint shadows on the green grass. I couldn’t make out if it was an adult’s or a child’s bone but I knew it was connected to something bigger. Perhaps a thigh bone or a rib cage. I stepped in closer to find out if it was worth anything maybe I could sell it to a museum or it could be an excavation site. I came closer and closer. My footsteps clearing grass and digging deep into the soft earth. I touched the bone, its smooth skin melted on my fingers. Its cold touch torpedoed through my veins. I pulled and pulled and wondered what might arrive if the bone revealed itself in the sunlight.
It did not budge. Sweat poured on my arms.
I went back home to get a shovel.
I saw the house and its oasis shadows for a moment. I felt like I saw another place maybe a distant memory of its previous inhabitants.
I wondered how a place could be so similar but not exactly the same. The same awnings, the same staircase, the same rooms, the same beds. Its as if I looked at a photograph but with different faces.
I opened the closet and took out the shovel. I felt its cold touch on my fingers it sent a rush of cold sweat through my veins. I wondered if the shovel was the only thing inside this closet before I came here?
I go back outside in the hot summer afternoon. In the distance the white bone juts out.
Whisper to a tree
the heart you can’t leave behind,
and
wait
till it grows into—
—is it supposed to be this quiet?
Where ravens made of butterflies
Last longer in your mind
Than
a faint whisper of a phoenix
rising
from an ash of clay.
Father lay asleep on the bed,
smiling
a moth landed on his chest
it glowed a pale green,
revealing
dark and light.
A half-bitten apple
left on a table,
slow-
ly,
slow-
ly
browning
with worms.
the poem is an ectopic pregnancy where the mother keeps trying again to have a child till she has one made of her
I stand by the edge of memory, looking
over my shoulder.
I can feel the wind crawling over my skin, as if
A jet were ready for take – off
I close my eyes and see a red sunset like the time
I saw melancholy by a table
on a white sand beach.
He (?) or she (?) waved a pale hand, telling
me to come over and have tea.
I stop walking for a moment, I wait
for the shadows to pass over the horizon.
I see melancholy still waving
I move closer,
Each step like a stone skipping
over a blue lagoon.
I see melancholy as clear as day,
Her pale brown eyes a brown mockingbird’s lips.
You are very much like depression,
I suddenly hear myself saying.
She smiles her moon light smile.
A pout wrinkles her lips,
come here, sit, have tea with me.
Her voice warm like coffee
(I remember distinctly it was not coffee)
no, more
Like freshly brewed mocha.
She looks at me with her dead-on silence,
(the kind of silence that makes or breaks me).
Suddenly,
the waves crash on the sandy beach.
I am awake
on the edge of a cliff,
dreamy
half-awake, half-asleep.
My eyes spread-eagled,
My fingers tingling.
I
take the first step over the edge,
falling,
fast,
like a comet.
I land firmly on a white sand beach cloud.
I see her (?) again waving her hand towards me,
I think it’s melancholy calling me again,
I come closer,
I see the face,
I was mistaken
it was home.
